Farewell and New Beginning – Kaddish for Yossi
The concert series “Mazel Tov International” is now celebrating its 6th anniversary. It started with a piano solo evening and has since developed into the Mazel Tov Piano Quartet. We have performed well-known as well as unknown exile composers and experienced growing enthusiasm as well as encouragement from the audience. Under the motto: Music in Exile – from Europe to the East and Back – Searching for Traces of Contemporary Music, more than 30 works were performed in the past concerts.
Unfortunately, we suffered a great loss: our friend and violist Yossi Gutmann passed away. The concert “Farewell and New Beginning – Kaddish for Yossi” was dedicated to him on 26 March 2021. Thankfully, the Mendelsohn Society made the hall available to us for this purpose and the Ursula Mamlok Foundation supported us financially.
Yossi Gutmann’s friends have written for him. Yehuda Yannay – of Romanian descent and Holocaust survivor, was Yossi Gutmann’s closest friend. He wanted to come from the USA for the premiere of his titular duo for violin and piano, “Kaddish for Yossi” (Unfortunately, he could not come because of Covid 19). A new solo for violoncello was written by Jeffrey Ching. My composition “Reset” was originally written for Yossi Gutmann and Hans Maile, but did not make it to its premiere. Now the piece has been newly composed for violin and violoncello. Because of the Corona restriction we were not allowed to have an audience in the hall. Now a wonderful film has been posted on Youtube.
